Five Years...Ten Posts: Part 9

We're almost to the top spot as we count down the top ten posts on our way the the fifth anniversary of The Two R's.

And today, we're going to revisit - for the 2nd time! - an old post I wrote for the now-defunct WoolleyScott.com site. Why? Because it makes me laugh, that's why.

Enjoy.

LET A MAN HANDLE THIS...REPRISE

After many complaints...well, actually no one complained, but I think about it a lot so...I've decided to add a little more writing to The Two R's! After all, it's supposed to be about Running and Writing, except about 90% of the posts are about running. So, starting with this post, and every once in a while in the future, I will toss in a "very special, watch with your whole family, serious-Blossom type episode" best of writing piece from the old Woolley Scott dot Com site.

Let's start with a little something I called "Let a Man Handle This", originally posted on November 11, 2006.

LET A MAN HANDLE THIS

Yes, that would be me...the man. Just wanted to make that clear.

So after about the 14th time that Payton shoved his hand down his pants today, Jen finally felt she had to speak up.

“What are you doing?” Jen asked.

“Nothing,” Payton replied. Wisely, in my opinion.

“Why do you keep putting your hand down your pants?” Jen asked.

“My underwear are too loose.”

“What?”

“My underwear are too loose. I have to fix my pee-pee.”

“What?” Jen asked again.

Listening in the kitchen, I could have stepped in at this point and advised Jen to cut her losses, but that really isn’t my preferred method of parenting...or husbanding, as the case may be. Sink or swim, I say. Live and let live, I say. This is what you get for turning my underwear pink in the wash and forcing me to speed-dress at the club to limit my embarrasment, I say.

“I have to adjust my pee-pee,” Payton repeated patiently. “My underwear are too loose and it just goes where ever it wants.”

“I hope not,” Jen said.

Me too, I thought.

“It does,” Payton said. “Dad understands. He’s done it before.”

Oh, boy.

“Scott!” Jen yelled. “Could you please tell Payton to keep his hand out of his pants, please?”

The double-please is not a good sign.

I ducked my head into the living room. “It’s a guy thing. Don’t worry about it. Pee-pees sometimes have to be adjusted. Don’t you ever watch professional baseball?”

Payton nodded sagely. “See?” He said to his mother.

I ducked back into the kitchen before Jen’s crook-eye could get me.

It’s no wonder there are so few of us SAHD’s...most mothers would rather have all fathers at work six or seven days out of the week. At least.

Where's that second R?

It seems I've been focusing far two much on the first R lately and pretty much completely ignoring the second R, so let's check out some writing today.

We're going to go in the way-back machine and check out an old WoolleyScott post - maybe you'll like it and maybe you won't...but I like it and blogging is all about the ego-massage anyway. So without further ado, a little piece titled:

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Now I realize that Jen and I are not always your Wile E. Coyote-type geniuses when it comes to parenting, but this one was a doozy.

Note the dazed expression on the sprouts in the picture above. Note that, except for the insertion of Chex Mix, the mouths are quietly closed. Note that the “poke” fingers are strangely within their proper personal space.

I know what you’re thinking...some sort of kiddy-Xanax, right? But no, it’s actually a different man-made marvel.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say this is a technological breakthrough of the sort that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of the Ziploc baggie....or Glide tooth floss. So you see what I’m getting at here; it’s big!

See, in this piece of crap Chevy Mini-Van that we rented from Alamo (which makes a sound like the tranny is going to drop out every time I put it in reverse) has within it the miracle marvel.

Yes, the flip-down ceiling TV with dvd player.

Back to the “genius” parents for just a moment: when Jen and I bought our spanking new mini-van a couple years back, we scoffed (SCOFFED!) at the salesman trying to shove the dvd player on us. “Listen, Buddy,” we informed him. “Perfect parents like us don’t need a dvd player in the car. We talk to the kids. We TEACH the kids while driving the countryside. We don’t neglect our children by shoving them in front of a TV just to keep them quiet.”

Man, we were insufferable dorks back then.

Anyway, that dvd thing is a godsend. Let me tell you, when you’re tailing some Big Island Grandma in a 30-year-old Mazda pickup for 64 curvy miles at 30 mph, trying desperately to make it to the Black Sand Beach...well, I’m almost in tears just thinking about the peace and quiet in that van.

Well, except for the Bugs Bunny soundtrack going at full blast from the dvd.

A small price to pay for a little peace and quiet from the back seat.

34 Days Until Nanowrimo!

Start cooking those plots. Just over a month now until the actual writing starts for National Novel Writing Month. Don't make the mistake I made last year and wait until November to try to figure out your plot. November is for writing - not plotting!

For inspiration, here's a little writing from the old WoolleyScott.com site. This one was called "Carson the Liberator" and was originally posted on April 21, 2007. Enjoy.

CARSON THE LIBERATOR
So Carson and I are at the trial-size Sedro Woolley Library and, as usual, we stroll past the sign stating “Please do not leave your children unattended.” Yep, sure, whatever.

“OK, Carson, I’m going to go look for some books. I’ll be right back,” I say, with oddly no foreshadowing whatsoever.

After grabbing two books over in the mystery section (an Elmore Leonard that I’ve read two or three times before and a Randy Wayne White that’s new to me), I head back over to the children’s section and see the librarian chatting with Carson.

“Hi,” I say, wondering what fantastic behavior the librarian will compliment Carson on, while at the same time handing me a well-deserved back-handed compliment on my superior parenting skills.

“Hi,” the librarian says. “I was just asking your daughter where she put the Zoobooks magazines that she had liberated some pages from.”

That sounded vaguely un-complimentish. “Liberated how, exactly?” I ask.

“Well, she ripped out a few pages.”

Carson pulled up the two Zoobooks magazines to display the ripped out center “to-do” pages. “Oh, we let her rip those pages out at home,” I explain helpfully. “Obviously, I didn’t want her ripping them out here, but we don’t bother with the ‘to-do’ pages at home.”

“I see,” the librarian says, looking at me like not only does my progeny destroy public property, but she also has parents that let her look at the pictures while she throws away the “learning” part of the magazine.

“I’m really sorry,” I try.

“Not a problem,” she says, this time with a look that clearly says I’m not the first white trash parent she’s dealt with today and I probably won’t be the last.

Ah, parenting; every minute is a new reward in itself.

Giant Mutant Bunny...reprise

Another "Best of" from the old WoolleyScott.com site.

Enjoy.


Giant Mutant Bunny Attacks Dogs!


So I took my son, Payton, to the mall this weekend and, of course, the Easter Bunny was there. Well, not the real Easter Bunny (although my son asked where he lived and the best I could come up with was “the South Pole, so he doesn’t get in Santa’s way”), but the 6 foot tall, ratty-looking Easter Bunny with the Temp inside cursing life and charging $14.95 for a photo opportunity. Now, since I have a rule, which goes something like this, “No purchases over $9.99 of items that neither Father nor Son will remember buying a week from now,” I had to refrain from purchasing the aforementioned photo. Seeing the forlorn look on Jr’s face, the Easter Bunny did give him a free pair of large, white, cardboard bunny ears, which were immediately applied to said head.

From the mall, we traveled directly to the comic book store downtown, because I had promised Jr. a new comic book for successfully completing a potty-training mission (let’s not go there). If you’ve been to a comic store lately, you know that there are approximately 8,045 violent, sexually-charged comics written for adults and almost two written for children under the age of five, so rarely do we have a lot to choose from. Nevertheless, we plodded into the store. Now, I must mention that this store, like countless other book stores, has live-in pets; in this case, two wonderful, elderly dogs.

Immediately upon entering, the short, fat dog turned tail and bolted into the back room. The tall, skinny dog stared us down for a moment, then started barking at the top of his lungs while moving backwards and knocking into people standing at the counter. It took me a moment to make sense of it, but then it hit me. The bunny ears! My son was a walking, talking, three-foot tall bunny out of the dogs’ worst nightmares. You could almost see the thought bubbles over their heads: “But I just chase bunnies in my dreams! I’ve never even CAUGHT one!”

About five minutes after I asked my son to please remove his ears, the dogs finally gathered the courage to come sniff us. I offered my apologies, but they were still a bit miffed, I could tell.

Let a Man Handle This...reprise

After many complaints...well, actually no one complained, but I think about it a lot so...I've decided to add a little more writing to The Two R's! After all, it's supposed to be about Running and Writing, except about 90% of the posts are about running. So, starting with this post, and every once in a while in the future, I will toss in a "very special, watch with your whole family, serious-Blossom type episode" best of writing piece from the old Woolley Scott dot Com site.

Let's start with a little something I called "Let a Man Handle This", originally posted on November 11, 2006.

LET A MAN HANDLE THIS

Yes, that would be me...the man. Just wanted to make that clear.

So after about the 14th time that Payton shoved his hand down his pants today, Jen finally felt she had to speak up.

“What are you doing?” Jen asked.

“Nothing,” Payton replied. Wisely, in my opinion.

“Why do you keep putting your hand down your pants?” Jen asked.

“My underwear are too loose.”

“What?”

“My underwear are too loose. I have to fix my pee-pee.”

“What?” Jen asked again.

Listening in the kitchen, I could have stepped in at this point and advised Jen to cut her losses, but that really isn’t my preferred method of parenting...or husbanding, as the case may be. Sink or swim, I say. Live and let live, I say. This is what you get for turning my underwear pink in the wash and forcing me to speed-dress at the club to limit my embarrasment, I say.

“I have to adjust my pee-pee,” Payton repeated patiently. “My underwear are too loose and it just goes where ever it wants.”

“I hope not,” Jen said.

Me too, I thought.

“It does,” Payton said. “Dad understands. He’s done it before.”

Oh, boy.

“Scott!” Jen yelled. “Could you please tell Payton to keep his hand out of his pants, please?”

The double-please is not a good sign.

I ducked my head into the living room. “It’s a guy thing. Don’t worry about it. Pee-pees sometimes have to be adjusted. Don’t you ever watch professional baseball?”

Payton nodded sagely. “See?” He said to his mother.

I ducked back into the kitchen before Jen’s crook-eye could get me.

It’s no wonder there are so few of us SAHD’s...most mothers would rather have all fathers at work six or seven days out of the week. At least.